Daily Archives: November 9, 2010

The best way for a church to communicate to the community is to stop talking and start loving. I’m sick of going to churches where they talk about love, but there is little outward compassion, especially for nonmembers. (unless it’s the poor people in the trailer park down the street we “adopt” every six months to make ourselves feel better)

Remember this phrase: Attraction rather than promotion. It’s a principle from Alcoholics Anonymous. Create an environment that’s so cool and so loving that people want to come to you. Then you don’t have to beg people to visit.

Mark talks to whoever will listen about finding new faith-based models of helping homeless people at hardlynormal.com.

Typical church homeless services consists of either feeding people randomly in a park, or housing homeless people forcing them to pray and read the bible. Even though churches have good intentions and mean well, randomly feeding people in a park often causes more harm than good. Housing homeless people is a serious step in the right direction, but two bible studies a day and sweeping floors is not a healthy program. It’s just structure and when the structure is gone people go back to their old ways. We say we are creating “disciples” but the truth is we are not giving a person life skills needed to live a healthy, productive life in today’s society.

Here’s more about what could happen:

I could brush away these bugs if it weren’t for these words from Jesus:

‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ (Matthew 25)

Social media chaplain. Author of "Lent For Non-Lent People" and "A Great Work: A Conversation With Nehemiah For People (Who Want To Be) Doing Great Works." Writer of 300wordsaday.com. I help people understand. Understand some of the Bible. Understand what Lent can be about. Understand what it means to follow.